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Read Ebook: The New Eldorado: A Summer Journey to Alaska by Ballou Maturin M Maturin Murray
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Ebook has 89 lines and 9894 words, and 2 pages
I ask you at whose urgence this is done! This deed of churchly duty!... Yes, in justice I seek; for there has been Some traitor and perhaps a liar.--Osio? Bianca? half, half I believe 't was you!
Will you requite injustice with a worse?
Monsignor, this in truth is hunting haste, To search him out Upon his wedding-day, And bind him with the very wreaths of it! Could you not wait an eve, a night, until To-morrow when his nuptials would be o'er!
Ah, can you not recant? Deny at once and so--
I will return to you!
Some who are avid now to be at vespers.
Matteo!
ACT II
A YEAR HAS ELAPSED
Shepherds down the mountain wind, Wild pipes play in the street. O Sicily, my Sicily, I long for thee, my Sweet!
Once a year God takes his joy, And that great joy is Spring, He weds earth clad in blossom-robes, For His enrapturing!
Once a year God takes his joy, And that--
The Devil's scullion feed you On flame, until your liver shrivels black!
O-h?! who's here! I come from Signor Osio!
The little Sicilian? Luck then is my slave!
Well, pretty fig! my little red pomegranate! My fair forbidden fruit--pluckt in the moon! I've come ... But, Blood of the Holy Sepulchre!
What thing has happened here?
Which yet I do not know, and which I pray Madonna you may be as ignorant of.
Whom yet I will not say but I will wed, Tho you are from that Paynim-breeding isle Of Sicily. You jest: so, in with you. I seek your lady.
For there has come of late into her mind A dread that has dried life within her breasts.
To frighten me and Signor Osio!
Another!
More! and I'll have it, by the crater of Hell! More--and your lips shall tell it with a kiss.
Before Signora Bianca--
Did you not see her? Am I Proserpine To make such gaping ghosts of you? I say, Was she not here?
What brings him here?
The honey from that flower--but what else?
Marina, yes, for you have been with her Too often under the moon, but there is more Behind you than yourself. Your master has Not sent you?
See, see! Oh, in her hand there is ... Oh!--oh!
I went into the garden to wait Aloysius, My uncle Aloysius, who is a leech. I have not slept.... What is it I am saying?
Is that one come to tell--
And say I cannot see him. He is my brother, My husband's brother, Whom I pray to honor. And is much like my husband: A likeness that unreasonably, it may be, I shudder to look upon: and yet--
And cannot and should not tho he sought me in That time which lies beyond eternity, That space which is beyond the brink of all. What thing it is haunting his heart I know not. But in his presence all my flesh becomes A shudder of horror, All my soul a fear. My husband's brother is he, my poor husband's, But he.... Go, go!... and tell him that strange drawings And strange repulsions pass the hearts of those Whom grief has gathered upon; and that I who Upon my wedding-day had torn from me--
Say, say I would he were not on the earth!
O mockery of it! fools my eyes were, fools, That stood within my head and did not see! To me he spoke of love--yearning for you, And in me heard but echoes of you ... ever! Yet, since you loved him, Why unto his brother, A heretic o'erturning God with stars, Did you--
And so you must forgive me if blind shrinkings, That to your sight seem semblances of love, Unhelpably o'ertake me.
O what is it I dread! what thing has changed All natural thoughts within me to repugnance, All instincts and desires into terror? I cannot touch my flesh, but I turn cold As if I had touched pollution, cannot press My child unto my breasts, but ... true, Oh, true!... A madness whispers in me, "Take it away!"
Ah, ah, Aloysius!... With healing! he at last! Uncle, the child--
And from my memory purge their pollution! Go, go!... And may the poison of you never pass Across my sight again.
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